search terms

I get a reasonable amount of search engine traffic to my blog, and one of the most popular cluster of search terms that people search for is on mephedrone (the others being: cool charities, homosexuality and Bah’ai, homosexuality and Sikhism, Christopher Hitchens, and an endless variety of angsty questions about police raids.) None of the articles in which I have referred to mephedrone have really dealt with the issues that people were looking for, so I thought I would be quite helpful and post some of the more common questions with their common answers. :)

Impounded illegal mephedrone

Can you still buy mephedrone online?

No, you cannot buy mephedrone online. The reason it used to be so easy to get hold of was because it was legal to manufacture, sell and possess. Mephedrone is illegal now in most Western countries, and consequently all websites that used to sell it openly have been shut down or are “down for maintenance”.

What shops sell mephedrone? Where can I buy mephedrone in Manchester or the UK?

No shop in the Western world will openly sell mephedrone. Mephedrone is now in the same class of illegal drugs as MDMA, cannabis, and ketamine, and is therefore obtained through the same channels.

How is mephedrone made? How was mephedrone produced?

The chemical details are here, but I suspect the latter question referred to the supply chain involved. Essentially factories in Asian countries, but particularly China, will produce any research chemical in industrial quantities on demand. As mephedrone was legal and had a phenomenal mark-up with no ramifications, certain entrepreneurial souls started up wholesaler websites and let people know they were around. And it went from there. You can read more about a dealer’s perspective here.

How much mephedrone should you take? What is the dosage of mephedrone? How can you increase the high of mephedrone?

Erowid has the answers to correct dosage and usage in its vault entry for mephedrone.

Is mephedrone MDMA? Can you turn mephedrone into MDMA? Can you buy mephedrone and get MDMA instead?

Mephedrone and MDMA are two closely related but completely different drugs. Mephedrone’s effects are less intense than that of MDMA, shorter-acting, and usage patterns tend to be similar to people who use ketamine or cannabis than LSD or heroin (i.e. smaller, more frequent hits that you can control, over drugs that once you take them, you are high until you come back down again). I am no chemist, but as far as I am aware, you cannot synthesise mephedrone into MDMA or vice versa. MDMA is in considerably higher demand than mephedrone and has a much higher profit margin, so the likelihood that you can buy mephedrone and actually be sold MDMA of any significant quality is pretty low.

Is mephedrone safe? Does mephedrone harm you? What is mephedrone being cut with? How does mephedrone kill you? Haven’t people died using mephedrone?

Taking pure mephedrone won’t kill you if you use it sensibly, but I wouldn’t say it was “safe”, no. It’s kinda hard to tell what the long-term health effects of mephedrone actually are because the government went and banned it before anyone could do any substantive research on the drug, but from what I’ve read, it appears to be corrosive. One user told a Guardian journalist that he left a spoon in a bag of mephedrone for 72 hours and when he came back, the spoon had been partially dissolved. So if you take a lot over a long period of time, your sinuses, oesophagus and lungs will not be very happy.

However, mephedrone doesn’t kill you in itself – like all stimulants, if you have pre-existing heart conditions, take a massive dose, or don’t take care of yourself while high by monitoring your water intake and body temperature, then you may well end up with serious health problems, be they heart attacks, heatstroke, dehydration, or anything else. This is not the fault of the drug. Almost all deaths that have been linked to mephedrone have involved polydrug use: i.e. mephedrone and alcohol, mephedrone and cocaine, etc. If you ingest two separate drugs, they will interact in ways that may be be better or worse for you (for example, MDMA and LSD apparently produces a trip that is signicantly intenser and more euphoric than either drug on its own – but cocaine and alcohol combine in your stomach to create a different drug which is potentially lethal) – if you are going to use drugs, do your research first and stay safe.

What other legal highs are there after mephedrone? What drugs are similar to mephedrone? What about ivory wave and mephedrone?

A number of legal research chemicals have been available online since mephedrone was banned, notably NRG-1 and ivory wave, but none has really taken hold – when drugs are still predominantly being referred to by their chemical names rather than their street names, only the psychonauts and the adventurous are really using them.

Mephedrone is not the same as ivory wave, NRG-1, or MDAT. No-one really knows what ivory wave is at the moment, because it hasn’t become widely available enough yet to be subject to proper sampling. However, a lot of ivory wave seems to contain MDPV, a cathinone that is similar to mephedrone but not quite. Ivory wave is currently legal, but doesn’t sound very nice on the system.

Mephedrone is a cathinone, so chemically it is similar to methylone, methadrone, and MDPV, which hold varying legality across the world. But to be honest, if you’re looking for a stimulant that’s similar to mephedrone and has decades of research into its long-term effects and safer usage, MDMA is going to be much healthier for you than unknown research chemicals.

Map of Europe showing countries where mephedrone is illegal, correct as of August 2010

Random search terms:

uk mephedrone post ban
– You can still get it in Britain, it’s just now £20 a gram and not very safe.

mephedrone class uk law
– In the UK, mephedrone is currently a Class B drug. Personal possession of mephedrone could get you three months in prison or a £2500 fine, and supply is six months in prison or a £5000 fine.

structure of mephedrone
– The chemical structure and synthesis of mephedrone is available on Wikipedia here. Here is an image:

Chemical Structure of Mephedrone

mephedrone precursor
– The main precursor to mephedrone is 4-methylpropiophenone, which as far as I am aware is still legal.

what was mephedrone designed for
– The drug was actually first synthesised in 1929, but rediscovered in 2003 by chemists looking to manufacture a “designer drug” that could get round existing drugs legislation. I’m not sure where the “plant food” thing came from. If you put mephedrone on your plants, they will die.

where has all the mephedrone gone?
– The majority of mephedrone production was in China; when mephedrone became incredibly popular, the Chinese government cracked down on the production of one of the precursors of mephedrone, and consequently the industrial quantities of mephedrone that used to float around have now disappeared. Because mephedrone is now illegal in much of the Western world, its production and supply has gone the way of other illegal drugs and it is consequently not being openly waved around in bags at house parties anymore.

which is more harmful mephedrone or cocaine
– We cannot know that until a lot more research is done into mephedrone, its long-term effects and its social harms. Chemically, mephedrone is probably worse for your body, but mephedrone has never induced the levels of aggressiveness and violence that cocaine produces in its users. We await more data.